The present invention relates to equipment for use in the production of lead acid storage batteries and in particular to automated industrial battery production equipment for wrapping the plates used in the assembly of large industrial batteries.
The construction of a lead acid storage battery is generally accomplished by the series assembly of a plurality of discrete cells formed within a battery case, each cell having a nominal voltage, when charged, of about 2.0 volts. Each of these cells is constructed by combining a plurality of alternately arranged rectangular, relatively thin, positive and negative plates to form an element. As fabricated, each of the plates is in the form of a grid, having a plurality of cavities, each being filled with a dried relatively fragile "paste" of lead oxide and sulfuric acid. Each plate also has an upstanding, connecting lug along one of its edges which is disposed so that all of the positive plate lugs lie along one side of the element and all of the negative plate lugs lie along its opposite side. In all applications, the element is finished by inserting insulating separators between and underneath the positive and negative plates to prevent them from shorting out after a subsequent charging step.
Since the advent of the storage battery industry, virtually hundreds of different materials have been suggested for use as separator material. For many years, wood was the material of choice, after which various paper materials received widespread acceptance. Most recently, a number of synthetic materials have been utilized, due in large part to their superior insulating and tear resistance characteristics. However, in most industrial battery applications, the normal practice is to wrap the positive plates with several layers of acid resistant porous material. This is both to retain any loose fragments of lead oxide paste which might tend to break off as a result the often severe physical shocks encountered while in use as well as to electrically insulate the plate as hereinabove described. At present, these insulating, protective layers are manually applied to these plates. Because industrial battery plates can be quite large, this method can be both time-consuming and physically enervating for the people who do the work. Furthermore, the continuing necessity of using manual labor for such operations is both expensive and inefficient. There is, therefore, a genuine need for automated equipment which can quickly, thoroughly and economically perform the plate wrapping operation hereinbove described.